East Coast Travels - Brisbane 1

8th - 12th May

I've split up my Brisbane posts into two since I've got so many photos! Click here to view the other post.

We left Surfers Paradise at 13.10 and had a very quick ride to Brisbane. It was just over an hour and arrived at Roma Street station at about 14.20. From there we had about a 10-15 minute walk to our hotel in Spring Hill. Note to self: don’t ever stay in a place with the word hill in it. It was such an incredibly steep walk to the hotel, and our huge rucksacks (front and back!) made it even harder.

We stayed at the Metropolitian Motor Inn. I was worried that it was going to be similar to Sydney’s hotel as we’re in a city again and we looked for a hotel that’s about $100 a night. Thankfully it was nothing like in Sydney. The room was an average size, had a balcony and a decent sized bathroom. It didn’t smell weird and there were no cockroaches. The location, other than being on the top of a hill, was great! It was about 15 minutes to the CBD going down Edward Street.

We’ve only been traveling for 9 days and we’re really starting to feel exhausted from moving from place to place so quickly, so we decided to be a bit more relaxed in Brisbane since we’re there for 4 nights. The day we arrived we just had a stroll through the CBD and the shops, had some quick dinner, walked back to the hotel and had an early night in.

Throughout our stay in Brisbane we kind of created our own walking tour, we searched around what the top attractions are and where real walking tours would go past, and based on that we created our own route. We started our tour walking around the CBD shopping areas. These include Adelaide Street, Queen Street Mall, Elizabeth Street, Albert Street and George Street. The streets are all in a big square and in the middle is Queen Street Mall, this is just for pedestrians so no cars. It’s a really spacial street with a few lovely dining places in the middle. There is a huge range of shops in this area. Most of them are affordable like Cotton On, Factorie and that price budget, but in the Queen’s Plaza Shopping Centre you can find Louis Vuitton and Chanel. The CBD is really nice and I feel it’s a little easier to navigate through compared to Sydney or Melbourne.

There is a really nice foodcourt in the Wintergarden centre where we had breakfast and dinner several times. It’s got some cheap yet healthy fast food places including sushi and some delicious Japanese meals. I would definitely recommend staying away from the bus station on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Albert Street. It’s another huge shopping centre but it was overwhelmingly busy when we were there!

We then moved away from the shopping streets and had a closer look at Brisbane architecture. We started off at Anzac Square, a nice little park area surrounded by skyscrapers. From there we crossed the street and walked through a beautiful lane called Market Street. I love how Brisbane’s architecture combines the old and the new, the traditional and the flashy.

We walked to St Stephan’s Cathedral, which was also surrounded by skyscrapers. I have always loved to take photos of abstract buildings, but what I loved about Brisbane is that there were so many mirrored buildings creating some really unique photos. 

We also walked in the other direction to King George Square. Along George Street there are “city roos”, which were really cool! George Square is where a museum is, City Hall, the library and another beautiful but very out of place church. From here you can cross the Victoria Bridge to Southbank. 

Southbank is my favourite place in Brisbane. It’s so relaxed and non-city like! They’ve created a rainforest and an artificial beach called Streets Beach, which I was honestly a bit unsure about, but everything was so beautiful! The rainforest feels like a completely different place, you’re surrounded by nature, trees and huge lizards. The beach was just like a real beach, the sand felt as soft as the sand in Byron Bay and the water was such a crispy clean cold feeling. We actually saw later on that the water is recycled rainwater.

From Southbank we slowly strolled to the Goodwill Bridge and crossed the river to arrive at the edge of the City Botanic Gardens. We first walked along the Mangrove Habitat Walkway. It was a really nice stroll along the river and we walked past some beautiful mangrove trees. The thing that stood out to me the most were the roots, they looked like tons of little sticks sticking out of the ground. 

As you walk to the edge of the botanic gardens, you’ll have quite a nice view of the Story Bridge. From there we walked into the Botanic Gardens. 

The gardens are much smaller than in Melbourne and Sydney, but they were still beautiful. There was a sign showing the flood levels in 1974 and 2011, it’s unbelievable how high the water level rose! They also had more of the huge lizards in the gardens as well as bush turkeys and the large birds we saw in Sydney. 

East Coast Travels - Sydney 2

Click here to view my other Sydney posts.

Day two: We woke up pretty early, had some breakfast at a cafe next to the hotel and at about 10 decided to start out day in the city. We found a leaflet for a free city tour, but decided we wanted to walk around at our own pace, so we noted down all the stops of the tour and walked it ourselves. We started off walking to Town Hall, a beautiful building that kind of reminds me of a way more beautiful Guildhall in Portsmouth. Next to town hall is also St Andrew Cathedral.

The day before we saw someone walking with a Victoria’s Secret bag. I am in love with Victoria’s Secret, but thought the only one in Australia was in the airport (which I briefly saw, but everyone wanted to collect their luggage..). Anyway after google-ing it, I found that there was a store in the Queen Victoria Building, next to Town Hall. The Queen Victoria Building is the most posh shopping centre I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful building, but you wouldn’t think it’s a shopping centre (photo right)!

After a stroll through, we went to Westfield and the Sydney Tower Eye. We didn’t go up, but took some great photos of the weird looking tower. There was also a really lovely shopping street in that area, Pitt’s Street Mall. It’s a street where no cars are allowed, so it’s a little quieter than the shops of George Street. From there we walked towards Hyde Park - Sydney isn’t very original with its names, there is Hyde Park, Paddington, Kings Cross....

On our way to Hyde Park we walked past the cutest and probably my favourite street in Sydney, it was the Sydney Arcade. It’s just off of Pitt’s Street Mall.

At the fountain in Hyde Park you can get some great views back at the city through the trees. It’s a great location to just sit in the sun and relax before going back to the busy streets. Here we kind of went back on ourselves, and I’m sure there is a better order of doing things, but we walked all the way down Hyde Park to the Anzac War Memorial.

This is a beautiful building. It’s a lot more modern looking than the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. There was also water in front of the building, which makes some great reflection photos.

We then walked back to the fountain in Hyde Park and continued going up on Macquarie Street. This goes past the Hyde Park Barracks, the Sydney Hospital, The New South Whales Parliament and the State Library, before reaching the Botanic Gardens.

The Royal Botanic Gardens are just a breathe of fresh air. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the city at all! It’s very quiet and relaxing and strange to stand in the middle of this huge beautiful park and look back to see the Sydney skyline. We had some lunch in the gardens, which only cost us $14 each, and then walked all the way up to Mrs Macquarie’s Point. From Mrs Macquarie’s Point you have a beautiful view of the Opera House with the Harbour bridge in the background, I shot a quick time lapse there, and from there we walked all the way along the Farm Cove to the Sydney Opera House.

The Opera House is very different close up from how I imagined it would be. From far it looks like one building, but when you’re close to it, it looks like separate buildings. It’s very weird. I have heard from a lot of people that it isn’t worth coming up close to the Opera House because it’s a bit underwhelming, but I thought it was great to see it up close and see a completely different angle.

After that we went back up through George Street, looked at a few lanes before going back to our hotel, The lane way in the photo is Strand Arcade. We had some dinner in China Town, which is probably the cheapest place in Sydney to buy food.

Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens are located just next to the Shrine, so again very close to my flat. The first time I went to the botanic gardens was for Christmas, we had a lovely summer picnic! The botanic gardens are free to enter so it's a great place to go on a sunny day and spend the day in the park.

The photo to the left is my favourite place in the botanic gardens, just just on top of a hill overlooking a pond and the rest of the gardens.

For Christmas I received some Moonlight Cinema tickets from my boyfriends stepsister. The Moonlight cinema is an open air cinema in the botanic gardens. The screen is actually set up on the hill opposite of where I'm sitting, on the other side of the pond.  We went to see Delivery Man, which started just after sunset. If you look closely to the photo on the right you can see a building sticking out just above the middle of the screen. That's the Eureka building in central Melbourne, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. During the film there were a whole bunch of bats screeching over our heads. It was kind of creepy but an amazing sight!

 The botanic gardens are beautiful and I've visited it quite a few times for time lapses and videos. Here are some pretty pics! I've also created a video with my new slider of the gardens. Best watched in HD full screen.